Painters, sculptors, and other visual artists are often dreadful at self-promotion. As a result, many great paintings and sculptures remain sitting in artists’ studios, unseen by the public.

The artists at the Rectory Art House Studios beside St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts are not content to remain unseen. They have opened an exhibition of their work at St. Brigid’s and, simultaneously, produced a small gem of a catalogue called Backstories, with each artist explaining his or her background, inspiration, and techniques. It’s exactly the kind of catalogue that the much larger and more established Enriched Bread Artists collective should produce for its annual open house in the fall.

Reading catalogues like Backstories at small do-it-yourself exhibitions such as this one helps visitors to appreciate and understand the works better. Take Andrew Morrow’s work, for example. He has only one piece in the exhibition. It is called “Study for a Tree.” The medium is “digital projection from animated oil paintings.”

Huh?

It’s a complicated process. Read Backstories to find out all about it and then marvel at Morrow’s ingenuity. Simply put, Morrow uses animation-like techniques to make snippets of oil paintings move.